Daily Archives: July 24, 2007

Lindsay Lohan Popped for DUI… Again

Ephemera

So Lindsay Lohan was arrested this morning for DUI — her second such arrest in under three months, and it’s a doozy of a case, tricked out with all manner of bejweled accoutrements of crazy. Already due back in court on
August 24 to face a count of misdemeanor hit and run, and charges of driving with a blood alcohol level greater
than .08 during a Memorial Day weekend DUI crash, Lohan was nabbed just after 2 a.m. this morning in Santa Monica, allegedly blowing between a .12 and .13.

The kicker? Lohan was apparently speeding after the mother of personal assistant, who had quit just hours earlier. Said mother called police, told them she was being pursued, and headed toward a nearby police station, where Lohan was nabbed. Oh, and after failing a field sobriety test, at the station, a search of Lohan’s person was conducted and
cocaine was found in her pockets. After spending several hours in jail
and paying $25,000 bail, Lohan was released. This definitely scuttles Lohan’s planned appearance on The Tonight Show this evening in support of I Know Who Killed Me, and should absolutely kill the movie’s opening weekend.

Happy Birthday, Jennifer Lopez

Birthdays

It’s a happy birthday to Jennifer Lopez, who turns 38 today, and no doubt celebrates (at least partially) by letting her husband Marc Anthony bounce quarters off her still-firm ass. I’ve assayed Lopez’s career arc previously, and can confirm that the forthcoming El Cantante isn’t going to suddenly re-adjust her trajectory in upward fashion. But in the interest of playing nice, I will make my birthday gift to Lopez silence today on matters of career resuscitation… except to say that if Bordertown indeed retains its August 31 release date, it will be a bummer month in the Lopez-Anthony household.

UPDATE 7/24, 7:13 a.m.: I just got an email, actually, that Lopez and Anthony will co-headline their first tour together this fall — also the former’s first concert slate ever. The multi-city tour of the United States,
Canada
and Puerto Rico kicks off
September 29 in Atlantic City,
and is produced by Live Nation and sponsored by ING,
a global financial services company. Firm dates will be announced next week, and tickets go on sale beginning August
10. For more information, visit Live Nation’s eponymous web site by clicking here.

Fox News Off Limits for The Simpsons

Amusements, Ephemera

I just put a bullet in an episode of The Daily Show — with guest Matt Groening, from Wednesday, July 18, in advance of a screening of The Simpsons Movie — and I found it interesting that he told Jon Stewart the hit animated show (broadcast on Fox) was expressly forbidden from making fun of Fox News, after using a faux-news crawl that tweaked Rupert Murdoch and also read, “Brad Pitt + Albert Einstein = Dick Cheney.” The reason he said he was given? “We were told viewers might confuse it with real news,” Groening says. I don’t know whether to laugh, or shake my head at the synergistic conspiratorial wonderment of it all.

On The Darjeeling Limited’s Poster

Posterized!

The one-sheet for Wes Anderson’s next film, The Darjeeling Limited, has been released (below), and its trailer is now online as well in theaters, appended to most prints of Fox Searchlight’s Sunshine and Once.

Above is the very bottom of the poster; the top extends to include the intricate, blue-green tile and artwork of the religious chapel-ish structure. Starring Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody and Jason Schwartzman, the movie — cowritten by Anderson with Schwartzman and Roman Coppola — is billed as an emotional comedy about three brothers re-forging fraternal bonds on a train ride across India, and its trailer unfolds in the same twee style that has long been a signature of the filmmaker. It seems mostly a hits routine for Wilson and Schwartzman (albeit a decidedly low key one), but the unifying flavor here may be Brody, though it’s too early to tell.

It’s been three years since The Life Aquatic, which is about right in terms of a break between these sorts of films. One thing I don’t get, though, is that the poster — which inverts its credits, putting them under the main title but over the above picture — reads, “In select theatres this fall,” which, consciously or not, gives off a certain vibe of we’re-dumping-this-pretentious-bauble. I can’t recall another recent film that has so advertised its limited run. Exclusivity isn’t what needs to be touted or highlighted with this movie; its subject matter and tone will do that just fine.

Matt Damon on His Career

Interviews

At the recent press day for The Bourne Ultimatum, Matt Damon took some time to talk about his career in general, and where he sees things headed in the future. “Well, you know, the career [path] that I think Ben and I look
at… (George) Clooney’s definitely doing it right now, and Clint Eastwood. Those
are the careers where they’re acting, they’re writing, they’re directing, and they’re
doing it on their terms. I mean, I think that’s the biggest. I love making
movies. I love everything about it — I love writing and I love acting,
and I really want to direct. So I’ve been taking this last 10 years to really
carefully study these directors that I’ve been working with. And I’ve worked
with a lot of really good ones at this point, so I feel like I’m ready to
do it. And that, to me, would be great — to have a long career. I mean, it’s so
hard to have a long career in this business. …I mean, I’m still here after 10 years, and we’re all probably a little
amazed by that. [laughs] But yeah, so at this point, I just want to just be
smart about the work that I’m doing and try to have integrity about the choices
I make, and that’s it.”

David Strathairn on The Spiderwick Chronicles

Interviews

At the recent press day for The Bourne Ultimatum,
David Strathairn took some time to also talk about his work on the forthcoming fantasy
film The Spiderwick Chronicles, directed by Mark Waters. To wit:

“It’s going to be completed in the near future,” says the
Oscar-nominated star of 2005’s Good
Night, and Good Luck. “I play Arthur Spiderwick, the man who has written a field
guide to the magical kingdom of trolls and goblins and fairies and sprites, which
he’s locked away because it has all these dangerous secrets, it’s kind of a
Pandora’s Box with the fairy kingdom. He’s gone off into the world to contact them
because he really believes that the world is full of them,” Strathairn
continues, describing his character as a “mad botanist” and naturalist. “Maybe
he’s eaten too many mushrooms, I don’t know,” he jokes. “But he believes that there
are things we cannot see.”

Adapted from Holly Black and Tony DiTerlizzi’s best-selling
series of youth-skewing books, with a much labored-on screenplay (John Sayles, as well as Ted Elliott
and Terry Rossio), The Spiderwick Chronicles is set for release from Paramount and Nickelodeon Films in
February of next year, with Martin Short, Andrew McCarthy, Joan Plowright and Mary-Louise Parker joining young Freddie Highmore (Finding Neverland) and Sarah Bolger (Alex Rider: Operation Stormbreaker) as the obligatory kids inspired by wonderment. For more information, click here.

Disturbia DVD Gets Shia’s Eyes

Musings

I got the spec information today for the August 7 DVD release of Disturbia, and had to laugh a little bit. The film’s original poster, of course, featured an eyeless shot of star Shia LaBeouf peering through those same giant-lensed binoculars. This is a case of box office performance shaping artistic reconceptualization for the home video market; now that LaBeouf is a big star, post-Transformers and all, it makes sense to show us his eyes. Still no front-cover name mention, though, which seems strange.